An anti Nigerian scam website has recently conducted a series of interviews with a previously convicted – and now reformed – scammer who supplied this advice on how not to be caught up in conversation with Nigerian scammers – if you’re interested in a spot of scambaiting you should do the reverse.

The biggest thing I can say is to delete the emails and never to reply. Once you reply your email address will be put on a list and sold to other gangs, even if you never reply again. It just tells them that the address is real and that somebody reads email going to that address. If they can’t get you with 419 (advance fee fraud) they will try phishing or viruses to get your banking details and take your money that way.

I used lots of different stories to get people to send money. I used the dying widow story a lot, saying that I was an old lady dying of cancer and had fallen out with my children. I wanted to give my money to charity and didn’t trust them to carry out my wishes, so was looking for someone outside of the country to make sure it went to the right place. So whatever the story is, make sure you delete the email, because you can be sure it is a scam.

Another thing is not to put email addresses anywhere on the internet. If it is on a guestbook or message board, or on a website anywhere then the foot soldiers will find it and put it on their list.

You know what. You can take your 140 characters and stick them somewhere else on the internet. Because 10 word Wiki is where it’s at as far as concise online writing is concerned.

The “encyclopedia for the ADD generation” has a ten word limit.

Michael Jackson

“Legendary pop singer/songwriter, trouble with press. Died June 2009. “

Australia

“Send your criminals down south to develop a horrible accent.”

Or:

Vast southern country inhabited by ex-convicts, aboriginees, kangaroos and sharks.

The rules are cool:

• Describe your subject in ten words. No more, no less.
• We like to stick to single sentence descriptions. Please try.
• For more fun, make your revision comments ten words also.
• Regarding images copyright is bad, drawing your own is awesome
• The facts can be sexy, but don’t use personal opinions.
• There’s no such word as libel. We’re fairly laid back
• Bonus “points” for using humour or indeed using some Gludu

College starts today. Robyn and I decided to set a precedent and be on time. Early even. So we left home at 7am. I didn’t even know there was a 7am. Let alone a 6am.

Needless to say we got to college fairly early. Earlier than anybody else – staff included.

There are 84 students at QTC this year apparently – and more than half of those are first years. And we’re keener than all of them (judging by arrival time alone).

Simone, in a little piece of offline wisdom, told us that the first few days of college are going to be all about establishing a pecking order (at least in our minds). I think it’ll be a bit like first year uni except without the low cut clothing and unrealistic expectations of finding true love in the lecture theatre.

I think pecking order should be established chronologically. So we’re first.

This is a bizarre story, told through some incredible journalism, of a young American man’s journey from the Sunday School rooms of an Alabama Baptist church to the bowels of a Jihadist operation in Somalia.

Here’s an excerpt. It really is worth reading the whole thing.

Despite the name he acquired from his father, an immigrant from Syria, Hammami was every bit as Alabaman as his mother, a warm, plain-spoken woman who sprinkles her conversation with blandishments like “sugar” and “darlin’.” Brought up a Southern Baptist, Omar went to Bible camp as a boy and sang “Away in a Manger” on Christmas Eve. As a teenager, his passions veered between Shakespeare and Kurt Cobain, soccer and Nintendo. In the thick of his adolescence, he was fearless, raucously funny, rebellious, contrarian. “It felt cool just to be with him,” his best friend at the time, Trey Gunter, said recently. “You knew he was going to be a leader.”

A decade later, Hammami has fulfilled that promise in the most unimaginable way. Some 8,500 miles from Alabama, on the eastern edge of Africa, he has become a key figure in one of the world’s most ruthless Islamist insurgencies. That guerrilla army, known as the Shabab, is fighting to overthrow the fragile American-backed Somali government. The rebels are known for beheading political enemies, chopping off the hands of thieves and stoning women accused of adultery. With help from Al Qaeda, they have managed to turn Somalia into an ever more popular destination for jihadis from around the world.

Read the whole thing – and then read this perspective on the story from another guy who grew up in aSoutherb Baptist church – Russell Moore – who provides a handy foil to the gun-toting American redneck type response that would traditionally see this guy as death deserving traitorous scum…

“You and I heard the gospel because of another jihadist’s trip to Damascus. Saul of Tarsus was filled with indignant zeal and, armed to the teeth, he thought he could terrorize the name of Christ off the face of the earth. What stopped him wasn’t a set of arguments. What stopped him was Christ. And the gospel he found on that sandy road was later propelled, through him, across the world right down to wherever you, and Omar, first heard it.”

Craig linked to this story about Australian’s being the most sinful people in the world. I thought it was interesting.

The finding comes from a BBC Magazine (Focus) article from an issue on sin. I can’t find the actual article – but there is another article from the issue online. An article which suggests that we’re hardwired for sin. Who’d have thought it. You know. Isn’t that what the Bible suggests. Groundbreaking research.

Funnily enough the observations are accurate but the conclusions are all pretty bizarre. All these bad things are actually good things and were useful once upon a time.

And in a funny little twist – it seems our Aussie love of self deprecation is just an ironic outworking of pride, it comes from the same area of the brain.

This is one of those conclusions where Christianity just makes more sense than the science…

“I heard it said that emotions are evolution’s executioners – they are what natural selection uses to make organisms successful at propagating their genes,” says Safron. We’re nature’s puppets – dancing to a pre-ordained tune that’s been reinforced through the generations. Now that’s a great excuse to demolish a cream cake if ever there was one.”

I think:

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”

Actually makes a whole lot more sense.

Blackboard was the best thing about Mr Squiggle. His “upside down” catchphrase was the backdrop to my childhood. At least once a week. And while I’m on the subject of Children’s television in my childhood – does anybody else remember that show called “Teabag” or something – the one where people were looking for spoons and pearls or something? Anyway. I’ll probably google it.

This photographer has put together a gallery of upside down portraits of people. I assume he hung them by their toes or something… whatever he did… it came out pretty awesome.

That title was meant to be a pun based on “fountain pens” it probably fails because I feel the need to introduce the rather amazing concept behind this post with a non-sequitur. I could try to redeem this lede with some sort of segue – but perhaps I should just get to the point (pun intended).

A couple of designers have conducted an elaborate plot to measure the ink use of popular fonts. They did it by writing the word “Sample” on a wall with ball point pens and then photographing the pens once it was done.

It turns out Garamond is the best – but I’m not sure they considered ecofont.

The Beatles are no strangers to the charts – but they are perhaps unfamiliar with online fanboys turning their careers into infographics. Charting the Beatles is a cool, and slightly ambitious project that is producing charts like this one which is based on the fun fact that Beatles songs often contained references to other Beatles songs.

The geek brigade have pretty roundly condemned the iPad (that picture from here). I can’t help but think that they might be missing the point – like this guy suggests – the iPad isn’t an awesomely powerful tool for geekiness. It’s an e-reader with a built in media player.

Today a Kindle 2 is $289 on Amazon.com. A Kindle DX with a 9.7″ screen is $489. For $10 more for an iPad I get:

-8x the storage
-a color screen
-a touch screen
-a touch OS
-a better web browser
-a better media player (iTunes)
-works on my home/work/plane wifi network
-the ability to download apps that do other things like play Scrabble and do Crosswords

Sure, it could have been so much better. Apple could have packed in the features. But then the price just couldn’t have compared with that of the Kindle. Being a recent convert to the Apple Fanboy Club I am going to put my faith in Steve Jobs to deliver a workable product rather than all the Internet critics who apparently know (and expect) better…

Have you ever wandered away from roasting coffee for just a minute only to look back and see your kitchen filling with putrid smelling smoke that brings about mild symptoms of asthma? No. Well I have. Just now. A lot can happen in a minute (or 6 minutes which truth be told was how long I had left for).

Here are just some of the amazing things that happen in a minute.